Grandmother Asks Robber: 'Is This Your 1st Time?'

FLORIDA

PEMBROKE PINES — Two jittery robbers armed with semiautomatic handguns burst into a house full of children.

All they got was a safe full of pennies, some doll jewelry and Christmas decorations - and the scolding of their lives from a protective grandmother Sunday afternoon.

The men posed as flower deliverymen with daisies for Patricia Marshall's daughter.

But when Marshall opened the door of her home, one man pointed a gun in her face. They forced her inside, ordering her and her five grandchildren to be quiet.

Marshall doesn't take orders well.

''He pushed me so I pushed him back,'' said Marshall, 63, a slight gray-haired woman who demonstrated by jabbing a finger into a reporter's shoulder. ''I said you're a poor robber. You're more nervous than I am; you're shaking like a leaf. Is this your first time?''

She continued to nag the robbers as some of her grandchildren cried and the men searched the house and demanded her safe.

She demanded identification, kept making fun of one robber whose leg trembled and criticized their technique. She said, for example, they should have worn masks and gloves.

The robbers searched the house haphazardly in search of jewelry but failed to take the gold chains some of the girls were wearing.

Then they used duct tape to tie up the legs and hands of Marshall and four of the children, including Crystal, her sister Tiffany, 12, their friend Jessica Pennington, 13, and their cousin Kevin Lutz, 6, all of Pembroke Pines.

They left the youngest child, Lauren Lutz, 3, untied. None was hurt, and they untied themselves immediately and called police.

Hours after the robbery, when her children told her how lucky she'd been to escape harm, Marshall was unapologetic.